Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1887-02-28
Priscilla.

ing white. The brown Of the roads,
the stiff spikes of frozen grass, and
the withered stems of last summers
flowers still showed through the feecy
whiteness.
AS the whitish darkness grew an
hour before the sun-setting of a
clearer day,It hemmed in one-story,
gabled-roofed, New England house,
showing, as the darkness deepened,
a yellow light flashing forth at mo-
ments from one of its high-set, many
paned windows. The light came
from the blazing logs in an old-fash-
ioned open fireplace, brick-lined and
black. Brass andirons, polished to
the last degree of brightness, flung
back and forth the CHEEKY flashing
light.
Now the logs fall together and the
blaze springs higher, revealing more
fully the quaint old room and Mary
Alden seated before spinning-wheel.
She is a daughter of John and Pris-
ella, but they are John and Priscil-
la of later date that the puritan John
| and the laughing Priscilla who said:
'FWhy don't you speak for yourself,
| John ?"
/ don't know how John Alden's
| h,,A D1Io
Mary, l mean is a girl with a mass
of golden hair, which, tonight, has
slipped from its coil and fallen down
her back. Her eyes are blue. They
are the eyes of a woman who can love.
They have just begun to have trou-
bled flights within their depths since
the new minister came. Her skin is
of the warm white of some roses,
deepening in the cheeks to the deli
cate blush at the heart of the rose.
Her lips take tender curves.
She leans slightly forward from
her high-backed chair. Her foot is
on the treadle; her hand is yet up
lifted holding the yarn. But her
foot forgets to move and the wheels
to fly round as she gazes beyond the
spinning wheel at things we cannot
see in the heart of the fire.
The shifting light leaps high, then
low; now golden, now ruddy with
warmth; now dropping for moment
to darkness only to light up again. re-
vealing more fully the quaint old
room with low ceiling and white
boarded floor; the brown, time-dark-
ened spinning-wheel, and-surely
this girl in the old-fashioned dress of
| blue Le-,,n-srnn. deep, ~+;ef L.
cuffs and neckerchief scarce winter
than the bosom it crosses, is Priscil-
la!
The dreaming Priscilla
| The puritan maiden Priscilla
Through the silence of the snow
| comes at times a sound SO common
| that Priscilla does not heed 1.-THE
rushing of many waters, and we
know that not far away is the restless,
mighty ocean.
We are on that strangely shaped
bit of New England, which runs out
and curls around in the ocean in such
a curious way, and whose name has
such a flavor of fisher-folk-Cape
Cod. We have CHANGED, too, on one
| of those old-fashioned houses, where
the fires are yet lit from the pine
needles of the woods behind.
Suddenly a stamping of feet is
heard at the door, a hand is on the
latch, and Mary springs from her
| dreams to meet rush of cold air,
gust of snow-fakes, and big rough
coated man with voice to match in
bigness, and roughness and-warmth.
"Mary My girl p
And Priscilla jumps into his arms
with half articulate cry of delight.
never minding the snowy coat.
"Oh, father? Oh, father! p is all
she says; but he is satisfied as she
| pulls him to the fire and takes off his
| hat and brushes away the glistening
| drops the snow has turned into on
his moustache and whiskers. He is
used to having her "baby' him,
and he likes it, this rough, weather.
beaten sea-captain. And the man
who is king on the ''Miles Standish ;"
who saws to this sailor, s'Gow and
he goes; and to that boatswain,
'sCome - and he comes,-this man
sits meekly down in the big arm
chair she orders him into, and obedi-
entity pulls off the snow-soaked boots
and puts on the wool-lined slippers
she brings. There is a delicious sense
of ease in slipping off his authority
and obeying the orders of his little
captain, though there is no knowing.
if he be in a merry or a tender mood,
but that at any moment he may
snatch her up to perch her on his
knee-which is the later fashion.
The two captains have gay times
together on the precious days the big
one is at home. She is his only one.
He has been her only one-until now.
And she doesn't acknowledge that
last yet, even in her dreams.
When the overcoat has been hung
away and the big captain has poked
up the logs to a brighter blaze, Mary
hangs the blackened kettle on the
crane; and by the time the water is
hot, the little, round, oaken table is
covered with a snowy cloth and old